


even tightrope walkers fall

by missymeggins



Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-25
Updated: 2010-09-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23080153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missymeggins/pseuds/missymeggins
Relationships: Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Kudos: 5





	even tightrope walkers fall

_even tightrope walkers fall_. **Castle/Becket** , Castle. 1,490 words. G. Post-ep for A Deadly Affair

Note: For Effie. Because she kindly refrained from jumping off a cliff when I broke our chat date.

She takes him back.

“See you tomorrow?” he queries hopefully.

“See you tomorrow,” she answers.

(It seems simple. But it’s not.)

…

He brings her coffee. She understands it’s a gesture of goodwill, but honestly, it jars a little. Part of her wants to just go back to the way things were but another part of her also understands that it’s not really possible.

The summer happened. They can’t erase it.

“Can we talk?” he asks her and it’s in that voice, that serious Richard Castle voice, that usually precedes the kind of conversations that take her heart in a vice grip. She wants to say no.

“About what?”

“You know what. About the summer, about why you were mad at me. I want to clear the air.”

“There’s nothing to talk about Castle,” she tells him briskly.

She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want to pick apart their relationship and analyse why she spent most of the summer feeling weighed down by her own heart. What she wants is to just enjoy having him back. She finds that if she tries, really tries, to ignore the fact that he left, she can smile at his antics. She can tease and make bets and let him win them because it still feels good to have him beside her.

It’s not hard to enjoy working with him again. Their partnership is second nature to her now. But it is hard to forget that she was willing to take a chance on him and that she got crushed. There’s a rational part of her that knows it’s not really his fault. He didn’t know and she didn’t tell him. It’s typical of them really. They never say what they actually want to say.

It hurt though and that pain still throbs dully just beneath her skin. It doesn’t overwhelm her anymore but it’s there and she can feel it when she stops concentrating on other things.

(If nothing else, it’s helped her clock up some much welcomed overtime.)

“Please,” he asks her, and he’s not begging – because Richard Castle doesn’t beg – but it’s as close to it as she thinks she’ll ever hear from him and she finds she doesn’t have it in her to turn him away.

“Make it quick, I’ve got work to do.”

He pauses briefly, as if trying to surmise which question to ask first. True to form he dives right in, getting straight to the heart of it.

“You and Demming. When did it end?”

She closes her eyes, trying to pull back from the memory of that moment, the memory of the moments that came after. This is what she’s spent all summer trying not to think about. But of course he wants to know. That’s just him. Always with the incessant need to know everything.

(She’s being unfair, just a little. She knows this. It’s about more than idle curiosity this time. He needs to know because it matters to him. She thinks that’s the part she finds hardest to deal with.)

“The night you left for the Hamptons.”

And there it is. The truth, hanging between them, tracing it’s cold fingers over her neck. She’s never hated the truth before. She had believed her dad when he said the truth could never hurt her – and maybe he’s right in most cases – but _this_ truth can hurt, _has_ hurt her and she sees in his eyes that it’s hurting him too.

He looks at her and for almost thirty seconds doesn’t speak.

(She knows because the ticking of the clock suddenly gets very loud. It seems like longer.)

“Before or after I left,” he asks quietly.

“Does it matter?” she asks him, shrugging, trying so very hard not to let it show how hard this conversation is for her.

“You know it does Kate.”

And she hates when he does that. Uses her name so sincerely. It’s like cheating because most of the time they glide along together, with the teasing and innuendo and the _fun_ and then suddenly he changes the game and says her name like it’s something special and speaks with such sincerity in his voice that it’s not about _fun_ anymore and she doesn’t know how to respond to it.

It feels like that game you play when you’re little, saying the same word over and over again until it loses all meaning.

He’s waiting for an answer though and his face tells her how important it is to him. She finds she can’t begrudge him the truth, no matter how much she might want to avoid it, because for all the games they play, all the speaking in riddles and subtext, they never actually lie to each other.

“Before,” she tells him. “I ended it with him just before you left.”

“You didn’t say anything!” he yells and she’s not sure if she’s reading anger or pain on his face but whatever it is steals the air from her lungs as she tries to keep her own cool.

“You had company,” she says simply. (But inside, it tears at her.)

“You were going to tell me something, right before I left. What was it Kate?”

“It was nothing.”

She fixes her eyes on the file in front of her, willing it to burst into flames just so she could have an excuse to do something – _anything_ – other than sit here motionless while he tears apart any shred of stability she had hoped to regain with him.

“It was something,” he insists, almost pleading with her.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does!” he yells again, throwing his hands in the air.

“If I’d known you and Demming had broken up,” he says earnestly, trailing off without a conclusion.

She turns sharply in her chair and for the first time in this whole conversation she looks him straight in the eye.

“What Castle? If you’d known you’d have done what?”

He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out and she doesn’t pause to let him find any.

“You’d have invited me to the Hampton’s again? And maybe I would have said yes,” she tells him, feeling herself start to lose control as the words just slip out.

“And maybe while we were there you would have made some grand romantic gesture. And maybe we would have had a great weekend. But you know what? It wouldn’t have worked. In the end, we would have found out that this just can’t work.”

She almost chokes on her own words and hates herself just a little for allowing so much emotion to leak into her voice.

“Maybe not Kate. Maybe we would have discovered just how well it _can_ work,” he says, sounding tired and looking it as he slumps into his chair beside her.

She shakes her head, tired of the way her emotions get tied in knots when it comes to him. It’s too hard.

“Maybe. But now, that’s all it is. A lost possibility.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“Would you listen to yourself Castle? Did you forget that you’re with Gina? Because I didn’t. You closed the door okay, it’s done.”

He winces, partly because her tone is so sharp but mostly because he feels like a jackass for even suggesting _anything_ while still involved with his ex-wife. It’s yet another stellar example of how little she can trust him. And the worst part is, he honestly doesn’t mean for it to be that way. He wants so much to show her that she _can_ trust him but somehow he always seems to get it wrong.

Alexis is right. He’s not very good at this.

“Yeah, okay. It’s done,” he says, not looking at her as he stands up and walks away.

“Kate,” he says, turning back for a second. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” she tells him gently.

And she is. Because she knows that really, it’s not either of their faults. This is just how things worked out.

…

He brings her coffee and this time, a bear claw as well.

He sits in his chair beside her and looks her in the eye.

“Look, we made a mess of things and we can’t change them. But you let me come to work as your partner so I guess that’s progress, right?”

He looks at her, waiting for confirmation and she nods at him.

“Good. So, can we agree to just be friends again Kate? Please.”

She nods again, unsure what to say to that. But as she looks at him, she feels that dull throbbing begin to recede a little bit further and she smiles. Yes, they can be friends, she thinks.

She _needs_ them to be friends.

“As long as you keep bringing me coffee every morning,” she tells him firmly but flashing him a brief smile. “And dinner on late cases,” she adds quickly.

He smiles back at her, wide and true.

“Deal.”


End file.
